Buying BioShock 1 this week made me very nostalgic

It is still on sale for 5 bucks on Xbox Live this week, till coming Tuesday. It's been 6 and half years since I played it on a PC, having been anticipating it vigorously (pun intended). I wonder how I'd feel about it know, being so much more fluent in English language and arts (having already been working at a university, graduating from English studies wit masters on interplay of music and literature). Have you also felt nostalgic with regards to this sale? To me, it was a defining game of last generation, hands down. And it's a goddamn shame it is no longer talked about to such great lengths as it used to be. People now prefer to talk about Naughty Dog, but last gen owes BioShock a lot more. It allowed FPS-RPG hybrids to become a VERY SUCCESSFUL genre as evidence by GIGANTIC success of Fallout 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and further streamlining of Skyrim which elevated it to stratospheric heights of popularity.

By the way, the first BioShock was criticized upon its release for streamlining the System Shock 2 formula, and some even went as far as to say it dumbed it down completely, but as the gen progressed, it turned out, it was still a lot deeper game than 95% of games that came out after it, and thus the initial scorn towards it was unjustified! Do you agree with it? Especially when BioShock Infinite was such a huge letdown, despite (superificial as it turned out) so many changes, which made BioShock's combat look like a Rainbow Six game in comparison!

I am extremely nostalgic about going back to Rapture, and I am normally not a nostalgic person nor I ever replay video games, but I'm proud to say it now.

Would you kindly add any cents from yourself?

i remember playing it

Man, it was a chore. Gunplay was meh, too many sections where you are just forced to stop progress to do a bunch of stupid random tasks or collect a bunch of items (seriously, i remember having to collect parts of some kind several times), and while the twist was clever, the writing is not the masterpiece many herald it to be as really the only thing that stands out is the twist

It was a good game.

The atmosphere was very cool.

The end boss was lame though.

^this is exactly how casuals think of games that have more than a straight line to follow and a terrorist to kill at the end of it. I have a casuals gaming friend who was saying exactly the same shit while praising CoD campaign... yes its sad but some ppl are just born to be tehcasualz

Feels weird that Bioshock is nearly seven years old and was out at the start of the last gen. MGS4 is six years old this year too.

Amazing game, I loved it and got a platinum trophy on it; but for some reason, I struggle to replay it these days, it feels so old and dated when playing it now, possibly clunky too.

I loved the first Bioshock, and quite frankly after playing the excellent Infinite... It made me want to replay the first one. I've been mulling over whether other not to re-buy it. It's dirt cheap these days though, so might have to.

I do recall playing it, and although very little still comes to mind, I do recall struggling with the gunplay. As someone else has said, the boss at the end was underwhelming too in many aspects. Overall, it was a great game, and it had nice little twists here and there. Definitely recommend it if you can get it that cheap.

i have the game for the pc for two 3 years and I still havent play it. couldn't get the sound to work on my computer. too bad cause it sounds like an interesting game.

I wasn't playing games in 2007, so I played it in something like 2010 I suppose (I also replayed it 2013). I'm a bit torn on my feelings towards the game. Some parts are just amazing. The opening, Sander Cohen level, the twist. Other parts I feel drag on for too long. Still it has a fantastic sense of place (I think the phrase is). It's so cool to piece together what has happened, who the various characters really are/reepresent/have done.

When it comes to the gameplay I'm more sceptical. Shooting doesn't feel right at all. There's a lot of complexity in terms of customization and so on, but it's really not needed. To me it falls into the classic RPG trap: tons of ways to play, none of them particulary fun.

It's a true classic though :)!

a classic game and easily in the top ten for last gen.

should probably beat that game at some point

I liked it, didn't love it though. The gunplay just felt really unsatisfying, and the story and atmosphere are great at first, but both fall apart in the last third of the game once the twist has happened.

I liked it a lot more than bioshock infinite just because of a single factor.......

Big Daddies. The Big Daddies fights were one of the best experiences I've had in a FPS.

Yeah I bought it again too... It's a masterpiece. In my top 5 of all time.

Yeah, it was a pretty awesome game, and I do not typically like FPSs.

i had no problem with the branching paths, you dolt. It's sad you assume that just because I didn't praise the game as everyone else did. Please tell me what's so hardcore or challenging about continuously stopping to collect stupid shit so I can advance to the next section? If they did this like 1 time, it would have been forgivable, but they didn't.

And not only do I not praise Call of Duty campaigns, but I must point how it is utterly ridiculous to just claim linearity is automatically inferior to a more open game. If it's designed well, that's what matters most. Bioshock has aesthetics. atmosphere.

I liked the story, I was underwhelmed by the setting and I absolutely hated the gameplay. It took me about 6 years and starting the game multiple times for me to force myself to beat it last year. I appreciate its importance last gen but I think Infinite is better in every way.

The RPG elements of BioShock were very VERY poor. Still love the game to bits but c'mon, its hardly in my top 5 of last gen and somewhat overrated. The last couple of hours became rather tedious fast

Good thing the RPG elements are poor because Bioshock is an FPS, not an RPG.

The sound issue was pretty common back in the day, mostly for people with Vista. Some with Windows 7 have reported it as well. There are fixes though, and if you have it on Steam, those fixes might be automatic. I'm on windows 7, and replayed Bioshock 1 just like a month ago. Installed through Steam and it worked just fine. You should give it another try.

too bad because I have the dvd version. not sure what I can do to fix the error.

I kno but since TC mentioned Bioshock was what started the fever of FPS/RPG hybrids I just felt I should have mentioned it

What an awful game. It's possessed of some of the most heavy-handed, faux-intellectual writing I've ever seen in just about anything. The fact that so many people think the big plot twist is truly profound really shows how low the standard is for writing in games.

It has its problems, like the radio thing being interrupted as your progress into different scenes, which really grinds my gears. The game is also incredibly easy and you're always spammed with ammo and health.

Oh yeah, it became too easy as it progressed, that's true. The sequel fixed that however and was actually better at certain parts but not quite at the story. Infinite was inferior to both in basically every single way. The only thing it can compete with is a story which had different approach to it.

Try putting your CD key into Steam. It's worked for several of my old retail games, including, most recently, Bioshock 2.

I had to force myself to finish bioshock. I never understood why people liked it so much. Had a cool setting but 15 minutes in I was over it.

The funnest part was the hacking mini games, imo.

Oh god, the hacking minigame. So tedious. So terrible. I still stop to hack every single hackable item in the game, every single time I replay it, though.

bah nonsense, brought me back to playing pipe dream on windows 3.1 as a kid, I loved it!

Same here. But I thought I was done with pipe dream forever. Was none too happy about having that particular piece of addicting tedium re-introduced to my life.

I actually played it for the very first time last night ( picked it up for £5 in GAME) its always been on my radar but I'd never got round to it before. First impressions are pretty good, graphically its held up pretty well, and the setting is atmospheric. Anyway, can't go wrong for a fiver!

Gunplay was very meh. Only gun that felt somewhat powerful was the shotgun, but the plasmids were fun to use.

I loved the levels you could explore and the story and setting were great. So overall I would say the game aged very well, I only finished it for the first time a short while ago :p

Because of GFWL closing down, the dev has migrated the game to Steam and you should be able to put your CD key into steam.

Bioshock 1 is possibly the most overrated video game I have ever played. No idea what the fuss is all about. Atmosphere and story are nice. Gunplay and plasmids are indeed very unsatisfying. Missions aren't very good either.

Hmmm Bioshock 1, Remember that water ? I know its not a big deal now but it was all the rage in 2007 ! Anyways Bioshock 2 cleaned up most of the 1st games short commings except for the gunplay.

Bioshock 1 never used GFWL in the first place. Bioshock 2 did. But yeah, Bioshock 2 migrated to steamworks a couple months ago, and I was able to register my CD key with steam. As for Bioshock 1, I don't know if old retail copies will register with steam, but it's definitely worth a try. Several of my old retail games did when I tried, including Crysis 1, Unreal Tournament 3, and Supreme Commander. Also, when I registered Supreme Commander on steam, it gave me the Forged Alliance expansion as well, which I never had in the first place, and is still sold separately. I was pretty damn happy about that.

I think that water is still a pretty big deal. Few games have topped it so far. Quite disappointingly, even Bioshock Infinite has worse water graphics than the original. Can't imagine why they didn't at least use the same water, if not improving it even further.

@ the_bi99man

Maybe the water guy left ?

@Lulu_Lulu: Maybe.. But it's not like that would stop them from using the same water effect as before. It couldn't even be a hardware limitation thing, either, since the original Bioshock was on consoles in 2007, and that water was there. Just a massive downgrade in water quality, for no apparent reason. I mean, Infinite is still using the same engine as the original, and an improved version, at that. I just can't imagine what reason there could possibly be for Infinite to not have, at least, the same water quality as the Bioshock 1. If they didn't want to put in the effort to improve it even further, okay. That's fine. But to actually step backwards?? Baffling, to me.

@ the_bi99man

Its not just the water, alot of infinite seems like a step backwards from Bioshock. Its like they time travel in the wrong direction.

it's a step backwards not only graphically - esp on consoles...of course, right?

@Lulu_Lulu: Yeah, after playing Infinite 3 times, back to back to back, then replaying Bioshock 1, Infinite seems to be quite a mixed bag. I really loved a lot about it, but the things that weren't so great, seemed to have no reason not to be great. Like the water graphics, as just one example. It's like corners were cut, where there was nothing to gain from cutting corners. Makes me suspect that there was some development turmoil, and even though there was a lot of time spent making it, some things still ended up being rushed.

I see I can register bioshock on steam at their website and isn't working. and I cant contact steam either. damn it I seen better support from smaller websites then them

It makes me depressed. I wished Infinite was more like it.

@ the_bi99man

Indeed, and what about burial at see ? Never got around to getting. In the interview Ken said they would be using infinite's mechanics (besides the sky hook obviously) in Rapture. which gave me the impression it was just window dressing.

I just booted the beast, and I got to say it looks as good as it did on my PC back in 2007, despite playing on 360, which is very good because even the graphics aged gracefully. I'd have bought BioShock 2 again, but I finished it not too long ago and traded it in, and while multiplayer can be fun, it is spammed by 40-50 lvl cappers who'll insta-kill you, so...you know what I mean.

Hmmm, good point. I was indeed thinking about Bioshock 2.

But according to this steam info, the key should indeed work. Never knew you could register Crysis as well, since it's an EA game, that's nice.

When I first used my steam account back in 2003, I registered my Half Life key and it gave me a bunch of games. One of them, Day of Defeat, became one of my all time most played games. So that was great :D

You need to open your steam client

Click on 'add a game'

Click on 'activate a product on steam'

Click 'next' and 'I agree'

Then enter the key and it should appear in your game list. if it doesn't, just restart the steam client.

Download and enjoy the latest version of Bioshock ;)

Nostalgic? Geez man it's not that old. TETRIS on gameboy makes me nostalgic. Super Mario Bros. on NES makes me nostalgic.

Bioshock? That's only a few years old.